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Intro­duc­tion: Pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the U.S. sub­prime melt­down, the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis has severe­ly dam­aged impor­tant aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety and pow­er, even caus­ing many to envi­sion the end of the dol­lar’s reign as the glob­al cur­ren­cy of choice. Many see the finan­cial melt­down of 2008 as a water­shed with regard to the dis­tri­b­u­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of geopo­lit­i­cal pow­er and the begin­ning of the end of U.S. glob­al dom­i­nance.

Eclipsed by the momen­tous pos­si­bil­i­ties called forth by the melt­down is the mys­te­ri­ous, enig­mat­ic per­son described as “the John­ny Apple­seed of sub­prime.” Large­ly unknown even to close col­leagues, the late Roland Arnall has suc­cess­ful­ly obscured vir­tu­al­ly every­thing about him­self, includ­ing his coun­try of ori­gin! (Arnall is pic­tured above at right and to the left, as U.S. Ambas­sador to the Nether­lands.)

This broad­cast exam­ines this piv­otal­ly impor­tant, lit­tle known indi­vid­ual.

Begin­ning with the top­ic of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, the pro­gram notes that the net­work has long made a point of uti­liz­ing Jews. (A syn­op­tic overview of the Bor­mann net­work can be found in the descrip­tion for FTR #305.) Using Jews as pri­ma­ry oper­a­tives has a num­ber of advan­tages: it pro­vides an excel­lent cov­er for a Nazi mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tion; the cap­i­tal derived for the state of Israel helps to assure con­nivance and silence on the part of the Israeli author­i­ties with regard to the exis­tence of the Bor­mann net­work and the Under­ground Reich; peo­ple can point to the great wealth of Bor­mann Jews and blame eco­nom­ic dis­tress on them, sim­i­lar to the Inter­net chat­ter gen­er­at­ed by the col­lapse of Bernard Mad­of­f’s Ponzi scheme. (Bor­mann is pic­tured at right, above.)

Not­ing the sparse­ly-detailed back­ground of sub­prime king­pin Roland Arnall, the pro­gram high­lights his Euro­pean ori­gins. Note that Arnall was described as “the John­ny Apple­seed of sub­prime.” Note that almost noth­ing is known about this secre­tive, high­ly impor­tant indi­vid­ual except for his “alleged” Jew­ish­ness. (Arnall is pic­tured at left.)

Mr. Emory com­ment­ed that Arnal­l’s coun­try of ori­gin is unknown, and yet he makes a point of empha­siz­ing his alleged­ly Jew­ish back­ground and his work for the Simon Weisen­thal Cen­ter. Arnal­l’s high­ly selec­tive secre­tive­ness remind­ed Mr. Emory of U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cer Lee Har­vey Oswald’s pro­fes­sion of his com­mu­nist sym­pa­thies on a WDSU inter­view avail­able in FTR #621.

This broad­cast is dom­i­nat­ed by one pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion: Was Roland Arnall select­ed by the Bor­mann net­work and the Under­ground Reich as a vehi­cle for under­min­ing the U.S. econ­o­my, as well as deriv­ing prof­its from the sub­prime extrav­a­gan­za for that net­work? (The pri­ma­ry inves­ti­ga­tor of the Bor­mann net­work, author Paul Man­ning is pic­tured at right.)

It is Mr. Emory’s view­point that Arnall may very well have been select­ed in a man­ner not unlike that in which Tino De Ange­lis was select­ed to under­mine the com­modi­ties mar­kets on 11/22/1963. The col­lapse of the mar­kets on that fate­ful day was an oper­a­tion that appears to have derived tremen­dous prof­its for the authors of the plot, as well as send­ing a mes­sage to the pow­ers that be in this coun­try about who was real­ly in charge. Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to exam­ine FTR #327 to devel­op their under­stand­ing of that aspect of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion.

Although secre­tive, Arnall was polit­i­cal­ly very well con­nect­ed, count­ing for­mer Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor Gray Davis, cur­rent Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger and for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush among his allies. As the sub­prime melt­down was pre­cip­i­tat­ing legal inves­ti­ga­tions in the Unit­ed States, Bush appoint­ed Arnall as Ambas­sador to the Nether­lands, mak­ing pos­si­ble inter­ro­ga­tion of Arnall in con­nec­tion with the sub­prime cri­sis more dif­fi­cult, as well as plac­ing Arnall in posi­tion to mon­i­tor sen­si­tive inves­ti­ga­tions mov­ing in the direc­tion of the Nether­lands.

As the world’s finan­cial insti­tu­tions began to hem­or­rhage red ink. Arnall con­ve­nient­ly died of can­cer, pass­ing from this world as secre­tive­ly as he had lived and elim­i­nat­ing him from fur­ther inter­ro­ga­tion.

Con­clud­ing with an update of For The Record’s cov­er­age of the col­lapse of the Mad­off oper­a­tion, the broad­cast high­lights Wal­ter Noel and his Fair­field Green­wich Group, one of the main feed­er funds for the Mad­off oper­a­tion. Tak­ing “Fam­i­ly Val­ues” to a new lev­el, the well-con­nect­ed Noel has drawn on his promi­nent Swiss/Brazilian in-laws (the Hae­glers) as well as his numer­ous sons-in-law to gen­er­ate cap­i­tal for the Mad­off oper­a­tion in areas that are pri­ma­ry places of busi­ness for the Under­ground Reich and the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work. (The Noel fam­i­ly is pic­tured at right.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of Mey­er Lan­sky’s attempt at black­mail­ing the Bor­mann net­work, result­ing in his expul­sion from Israel and arrest by U.S. author­i­ties; review of infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that Schwarzeneg­ger is an agent of the Under­ground Reich; review of infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that the Mad­off oper­a­tion may very well be a Bor­mann gam­bit.

1a. Begin­ning with the top­ic of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, the pro­gram notes that the net­work has long made a point of uti­liz­ing Jews. A syn­op­tic overview of the Bor­mann net­work can be found in the descrip­tion for FTR #305.

Using Jews as pri­ma­ry oper­a­tives has a num­ber of advan­tages: it pro­vides an excel­lent cov­er for a Nazi mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tion; the cap­i­tal derived for the state of Israel helps to assure con­nivance and silence on the part of the Israeli author­i­ties with regard to the exis­tence of the Bor­mann net­work and the Under­ground Reich; peo­ple can point to the great wealth of Bor­mann Jews and blame eco­nom­ic dis­tress on them, sim­i­lar to the Inter­net chat­ter gen­er­at­ed by the col­lapse of Bernard Mad­of­f’s Ponzi scheme. (Mad­off is dis­cussed below.)

“. . . Since the found­ing of Israel, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many had paid out 85.3 bil­lion marks, by the end of 1977, to sur­vivors of the Holo­caust. East Ger­many ignores any such lia­bil­i­ty. From South Amer­i­ca, where pay­ment must be made with sub­tle­ty, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion has made a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion. It has drawn many of the bright­est Jew­ish busi­ness­men into a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry role in the devel­op­ment of many of its cor­po­ra­tions, and many of these Jews share their pros­per­i­ty most gen­er­ous­ly with Israel. If their pro­pos­als are sound, they are even pro­vid­ed with a spe­cial­ly dis­pensed ven­ture cap­i­tal fund. I spoke with one Jew­ish busi­ness­man in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut. He had arrived there quite unknown sev­er­al years before our con­ver­sa­tion, but with Bor­mann mon­ey as his lever­age. Today he is more than a mil­lion­aire, a qui­et leader in the com­mu­ni­ty with a cer­tain share of his prof­its ear­marked, as always, for his ven­ture cap­i­tal bene­fac­tors. This has tak­en place in many oth­er instances across Amer­i­ca and demon­strates how Bormann’s peo­ple oper­ate in the con­tem­po­rary com­mer­cial world, in con­trast to the fan­ci­ful non­sense with which Nazis are described in so much ‘lit­er­a­ture.’ So much empha­sis is placed on select Jew­ish par­tic­i­pa­tion in Bor­mann com­pa­nies that when Adolf Eich­mann was seized and tak­en to Tel Aviv to stand tri­al, it pro­duced a shock wave in the Jew­ish and Ger­man com­mu­ni­ties of Buenos Aires. Jew­ish lead­ers informed the Israeli author­i­ties in no uncer­tain terms that this must nev­er hap­pen again because a rep­e­ti­tion would per­ma­nent­ly rup­ture rela­tions with the Ger­mans of Latin Amer­i­ca, as well as with the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, and cut off the flow of Jew­ish mon­ey to Israel. It nev­er hap­pened again, and the pur­suit of Bor­mann qui­et­ed down at the request of these Jew­ish lead­ers. He is resid­ing in an Argen­tine safe haven, pro­tect­ed by the most effi­cient Ger­man infra­struc­ture in his­to­ry as well as by all those whose pros­per­i­ty depends on his well-being. Per­son­al invi­ta­tion is the only way to reach him.”

(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 226–227.)

1b. The pro­gram relates an inci­dent in which orga­nized crime king­pin Mey­er Lan­sky tried to black­mail the Bor­mann group, which result­ed in his removal from Israel.

“A reveal­ing insight into this inter­na­tion­al finan­cial and indus­tri­al net­work was giv­en me by a mem­ber of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion resid­ing in West Ger­many. Mey­er Lan­sky, he said, the finan­cial advi­sor to the Las Vegas—Miami under­world sent a mes­sage to Bor­mann through my West Ger­man SS con­tact. Lan­sky promised that if he received a piece of Bormann’s action he would keep the Israeli agents off Bormann’s back. ‘I have a very good rela­tion with the Israeli secret police’ was his claim, although he was to be kicked out of Israel when his pres­ence became too noted—and also at the urg­ing of Bormann’s secu­ri­ty chief in South Amer­i­ca. At the time Lan­sky was in the pent­house suite of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, in which he owned stock. He had fled to Israel to evade a U.S. fed­er­al war­rant for his arrest. He sent his mes­sage to Bor­mann through his bag man in Switzer­land, John Pull­man, also want­ed in the Unit­ed States on a fed­er­al war­rant. Lan­sky told Pull­man to make this offer ‘which he can’t refuse.’ The offer was for­ward­ed to Buenos Aires, where it was greet­ed with laugh­ter. When the laugh­ter died down, it was replaced with action. Mey­er was evict­ed from Israel and was told by Swiss author­i­ties to stay out of their coun­try, so he flew to South Amer­i­ca. There he offered any pres­i­dent who would give him asy­lum a cool $1 mil­lion in cash. He was turned down every­where and had to con­tin­ue his flight to Mia­mi, where U.S. mar­shals, alert­ed, were wait­ing to take him into cus­tody.”

(Ibid.; pp. 227–228.)

2. Not­ing the sparse­ly-detailed back­ground of sub­prime king­pin Roland Arnall, the pro­gram high­lights his Euro­pean ori­gins. Note that Arnall was described as “the John­ny Apple­seed of sub­prime.” Note that almost noth­ing is known about this secre­tive, high­ly impor­tant indi­vid­ual except for his “alleged” Jew­ish­ness.

Mr. Emory com­ment­ed that Arnal­l’s coun­try of ori­gin is unknown, and yet he makes a point of empha­siz­ing his alleged­ly Jew­ish back­ground and his work for the Simon Weisen­thal Cen­ter. Arnal­l’s high­ly selec­tive secre­tive­ness remind­ed Mr. Emory of U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cer Lee Har­vey Oswald’s pro­fes­sion of his com­mu­nist sym­pa­thies on a WDSU inter­view avail­able in FTR #621.

This broad­cast is dom­i­nat­ed by one pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion: Was Roland Arnall select­ed by the Bor­mann net­work and the Under­ground Reich as a vehi­cle for under­min­ing the U.S. econ­o­my, as well as deriv­ing prof­its from the sub­prime extrav­a­gan­za for that net­work?

It is Mr. Emory’s view­point that Arnall may very well have been select­ed in a man­ner not unlike that in which Tino De Ange­lis was select­ed to under­mine the com­modi­ties mar­kets on 11/22/1963. The col­lapse of the mar­kets on that fate­ful day was an oper­a­tion that appears to have derived tremen­dous prof­its for the authors of the plot, as well as send­ing a mes­sage to the pow­ers that be in this coun­try about who was real­ly in charge. Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to exam­ine FTR #327 to devel­op their under­stand­ing of that aspect of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion.

“. . . Until the ear­ly 2000s, he [Arnall] was for the most part invis­i­ble, keep­ing his pic­ture out of the papers as best he could. On occa­sion there might be a sto­ry about the Los Ange­les-based Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter, which Arnall helped found, but not much else. His avoid­ance of the press was inten­tion­al. Arnall, to the dis­pute of no one, shunned pub­lic­i­ty with an almost reli­gious zeal. Cole, an LBM employ­ee for just under two years, remem­bers a con­ver­sa­tion he had with Arnall when he said, ‘We’ve got to stay under the radar.’ Added Cole, ‘He was very secre­tive. He shunned pub­lic­i­ty. Roland does not give press inter­views.’ . . .”

Chain of Blame; by Paul Muo­lo and Matthew Padil­la; Joh Wiley & Sons [HC]; Copy­right 2008 by Paul Muo­lo and Matthew Pakil­la; p.79.

3. More about Arnal­l’s back­ground:

” . . . Only one thing seems cer­tain about his ear­ly years: that he was born in 1939 in Europe. His fam­i­ly was Jew­ish, which meant their lives were in dan­ger as Hitler came to pow­er and Nazi Ger­many expand­ed its bor­ders by invad­ing oth­er nations. His offi­cial biog­ra­phy has him born in Paris on the eve of World War II. An uncon­firmed press report says it was Poland. (Arnall has nev­er giv­en any type of exten­sive inter­view about his past, or about any­thing else for that mat­ter.) To avoid detec­tion by the Nazis, the fam­i­ly said they were Catholic, accord­ing to one attor­ney who did busi­ness with Arnall. . .”

Ibid.; pp. 74–75.

4. Although secre­tive, Arnall was–as we shall see–politically very well con­nect­ed.

” . . . The oth­er rea­son Mozi­lo took an inter­est in Arnall was that Arnal­l’s cur­rent lend­ing ven­ture, Ameriquest Mort­gage, a retail non depos­i­to­ry based in near­by Orange, was begin­ning to accu­mu­late a huge mar­ket share in sup­prime  mort­gages, a prod­uct niche that Coun­try­wide had avoid­ed for most of its 30-year-plus his­to­ry but was now slow­ly but sure­ly gain­ing trac­tion in. Arnall was also on the verge of launch­ing a nation­wide whole­sale lender called Argent Mortage that was gear­ing to sell sub­prime through loan bro­kers in as many states as pos­si­ble-and as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. If there was one thing that Mozi­lo paid care­ful atten­tion to, it was mar­ket share. It was a giv­en that he was going to let Arnall have some of his time. It also did­n’t hurt that Arnall was polit­i­cal­ly well con­nect­ed, hav­ing donat­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to fed­er­al and local politi­cians over the years. For­mer Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor Gray Davis offi­ci­at­ed at his wed­ding in 2000. . .”

Ibid.; p. 74.

5. The sig­nif­i­cance of Arnall for the sub­prime busi­ness and the glob­al eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion stem­ming from that are encap­su­lat­ed by the obser­va­tion that he [Arnall] was “the John­ny Apple­seed of the sub­prime busi­ness.

” . . .Even though Arnall was out of the busi­ness by 2007, he (as well as the Jed­i­naks) had left behind a fam­i­ly tree of exec­u­tives and loan offi­cers who had worked at one of his com­pa­nies and then decid­ed to either start their own sub­prime shop or work for an exist­ing one, tak­ing along with them the tricks of the trade-not all of them good. In a way, Arnall had served as the John­ny Apple­seed of the indus­try. Jack Mayesh, Arnal­l’s right-hand man at Long Beach Mort­gage, stayed out of the busi­ness for three years after the com­pa­ny was sold to WaMu and then reemerged with a brand-new lender called Res­i­den­tial Mort­gage Assis­tance Enter­prise or Res­MAE for short. (Note how it sounds like Fan­nie Mae.) It was based in Brea, nes­tled in the foothills of north Orange Coun­ty, 20 miles from the Pacif­ic. Its specialty–to no one’s sur­prise-was suprime lend­ing. Mayesh’s back­ers on Wall Street? Lehman Broth­ers and Green­wich Cap­i­tal, which promised to lend him mon­ey and either buy or secu­ri­tize his loans. Join­ing Mayesh in his new ven­ture were two oth­er for­mer exec­u­tives who had worked for Arnall: Edward Resendez and William Kom­per­da. In its first year of oper­a­tion Res­MAE fund­ed $1 bil­lion in loans, a phe­nom­e­nal sum for a com­pa­ny that a year ear­li­er did­n’t even exist.

Anoth­er for­mer Arnall acolyte at Long Beach Mort­gage was Steven Hold­er, who went on to help start New Cen­tu­ry Finan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion, a non­bank that even­tu­al­ly sup­plant­ed Ameriquest/Argent as the largest sub­prime fun­der in the Unit­ed States. Hold­er even­tu­al­ly left New Cen­tu­ry and formed yet anoth­er com­pa­ny, Encore Cred­it, which Bear Stearns backed. Also out of Long Beach Mort­gage came Frank Cur­ry, who formed Acoustic Home Loans. LBM alum­ni Pat Rank and Bob Dubr­ish launched Option One Mort­gage, which even­tu­al­ly was sold to Fleet Bank of Boston, and then to H&R Block, the tax prepa­ra­tion giant. (In time Option One became a top five ranked sub­prime orig­i­na­tor.) Arnall employ­ee Tim Walsh launched the retail arm of First NLC Finan­cial Ser­vices of Deer­field Beach, Flori­da. Even­tu­al­ly, more than 100 Ameriquest employ­ees, includ­ing sev­er­al top sales man­agers and LOs [Loan Offi­cers], would join him. . . .”

Ibid.; p. 101.

6. Some­thing of the scale of Arnal­l’s pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign on behalf of his firms can be gleaned from the fol­low­ing pas­sage:

“. . . The idea was to brand the Ameriquest name on any­thing that would give the com­pa­ny max­i­mum expo­sure and make its tele­phones ring. (As Cole had not­ed, it was all about sell­ing.) Over the years Ameriquest bought the nam­ing rights to the Texas Rangers base­ball sta­di­um, and adver­tised on the walls of major and minor league sta­di­ums. It spon­sored a tour by the Rolling Stones, and even topped that by hir­ing (Sir) Paul McCart­ney to play the half time show at the Super Bowl-the Amriquest name embla­zoned over the TV screen as the for­mer Bea­t­le fin­ished ‘Live and Let Die.’

Argent, even though it did­n’t deal direct­ly with the pub­lic but through loan bro­kers, spon­sored NASCAR race car dri­vers Dario Fran­chit­ti and Dan­i­ca Patrick, the Argent name print­ed proud­ly on their cars and uni­forms. It spon­sored ath­letes far and wide-Jim Furyk, Chris de Mar­co (Golf), Michael Phelps and Aman­da Beard (the U.S. Olympic team), among oth­ers. Ter­ry Rouch, who worked for sev­er­al of Arnal­l’s mort­gage com­pa­nies over the years, not­ed that the Ameriquest/Argent name was ‘tru­ly every­where,’ say­ing the com­pa­ny’s plan was to cre­ate instant name recog­ni­tion ‘not just to bro­kers and bor­row­ers but lit­er­al­ly to the world and with all 50 state attor­ney gen­er­als.’

The men­tion of the AGs by Rouch was a joke, but that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. Ameriquest/Argent was noth­ing short of a mort­gage jug­ger­naut. Not only was it the largest sub­prime lender in the nation, but it now ranked 10^th among all res­i­den­tial lenders. The indus­try knew it, Mozi­lo knew it, invest­ment bankers knew it. Man­ag­ing direc­tors from Bear Stearns, Lehman Broth­ers, and Fried­man Billings Ram­sey had all knocked on Arnal­l’s door try­ing to con­vince him to take the com­pa­ny pub­lic through an IPO. Year after year he resist­ed, but then in late 2004, he began to think oth­er­wise. Around this time both the press and sev­er­al AGs’ offices (Cal­i­for­nia, Con­necti­cut, Iowa, and New York) began pay­ing atten­tion to a grow­ing pile of alle­ga­tions against the com­pa­ny-that some of Ameriquest’s retail loan offi­cers were a lit­tle bit too high-pres­sure on the sales tac­tics, con­vinc­ing home­own­ers to take out loans that they could­n’t afford. It was also around this time that Arnal­l’s retail pro­duc­tion chief, the man in charge of all the LOs on the street, Kirk Langs, announced his retire­ment. Langs was 40 years old. The com­pa­ny, true to form, said lit­tle about the retire­ment. Rumors began to cir­cu­late in the indus­try that Langs might have walked away with a retire­ment pack­age worth $17 mil­lion. He, like his boss, was­n’t one to give inter­views.”

Ibid.; pp. 93–94.

7. Arnal­l’s luck began to run out. Suc­cess­ful for a time, the sub­prime alba­tross began to weigh down the glob­al finan­cial indus­try.

” . . . Rumors were swirling around about Arnal­l’s Ameriquest being the sub­ject of preda­to­ry lend­ing inves­ti­ga­tions in mul­ti­ple states. The last thing in the world the mar­ket liked was an inves­ti­ga­tion about a mort­gage fir­m’s lend­ing prac­tices-even if it was an aber­ra­tion. And it was dou­bly bad that the rumors con­cerned the nation’s largest sub­prime lender: Ameriquest. . . .”

Ibid.; p. 143.

8. Even as clouds appeared on Arnal­l’s pro­fes­sion­al hori­zon, he was nom­i­nat­ed by the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion to be U.S. ambas­sador to the Nether­lands. Note that this appoint­ment occurred as two inves­ti­ga­tions were mov­ing in the direc­tion of the Netherlands–the inves­ti­ga­tions into the Bush fam­i­ly’s Nazi con­nec­tions as well as that of the two Dutch­men who oper­at­ed the Flori­da flight schools through which many of the 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trat­ed the U.S.

” . . .Wall Street firms had made well over $100 mil­lion in fees from Ameriquest, Argent, and affil­i­at­ed lenders over the years by lend­ing them mon­ey and secu­ri­tiz­ing their sub­prime loans, but the biggest pay­day of them all-under­writ­ing fees from an IPO-like­ly would nev­er mate­ri­al­ize. Word of sev­er­al state AG inves­ti­ga­tions con­cern­ing its lend­ing prac­tices had killed that hope.

In late July, the Bush White House made it offi­cial: Arnall was being con­sid­ered for the ambas­sador­ship to the Nether­lands. This time, Ameriquest’s spokesman, Chris Orlan­do, final­ly decid­ed to say some­thing: ‘Mr. Arnall would be will­ing and hon­ored to serve his coun­try in any way he might be asked.’ Even though Arnall and his wife had made large dona­tions to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee over the years, all eight Democ­rats on the For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, which had the first vote on ambas­sador­ships, said they would vote no because of the abu­sive lend­ing alle­ga­tions hang­ing over the com­pa­ny. Repub­li­cans were inclined to vote yes. Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Norm Cole­man from Min­neso­ta said of Arnall, ‘His per­son­al actions had nev­er been called into ques­tion.’

In Jan­u­ary of 2006, and after sev­er­al more months of rumors about what the AG offices were up to, Ameriquest made if offi­cial, agree­ing to pay 49 states $325 mil­lion to set­tle charges that it engaged in abu­sive lend­ing prac­tices. (Vir­ginia was exclud­ed from the set­tle­ment because Ameriquest did­n’t lend there.) It was the sec­ond largest home lend­ing set­tle­ment in U.S. his­to­ry. Rough­ly 750,000 loans that Ameriquest had made through its Boil­er Room-trained LOs were affect­ed by the set­tle­ment. On aver­age, each Ameriquest cus­tomer would get $600. One of the most dam­ag­ing charges against the com­pa­ny was that its LOs had engaged in a prac­tice called upselling where the loan offi­cer was com­pen­sat­ed extra mon­ey to orig­i­nate mort­gages at a high­er note rate or more points. In set­tling, the com­pa­ny admit­ted no wrong doing and boast­ed to the press that the set­tle­ment with the states in no way restrict­ed its abil­i­ty to lend.

The deal also cleared the way for Arnal­l’s ambas­sador­ship to go through, though the vote was nar­row. Short­ly ther­after, his wife Dawn was named chair­man of ACC, the hold­ing com­pa­ny that over­saw Ameriquest and Argent. Argent, the whole­sale arm that used bro­kers, was­n’t part of the set­tle­ment, though Iowa AG Tom Miller told reporters that the states would begin inves­ti­gat­ing whole­salers and bro­kers. . . .”

Ibid.; pp. 96–97.

9. As Arnall was rep­re­sent­ing the U.S. to the Dutch, his sub­prime empire and its asso­ciates and imi­ta­tors were melt­ing down, tak­ing the world’s finan­cial sys­tem with it.

” . . . Wall Street firm after firm would announce that they were writ­ing down by bil­lions of dol­lars the val­ue of sub­prime CDOs they held on their bal­ance sheets. The num­bers were get­ting huge: Cit­i­group ($11 bil­lion with poten­tial expo­sure on CDOs and struc­tured invest­ment vehi­cles of $45 bil­lion); Unit­ed Bank of Switzer­land (UBS, a major ware­house lender to sub­prime non­banks and an investor in CDOs, $10 bil­lion in write-downs); Mer­rill Lynch ($8.4 bil­lion); Bear Stearns ($1.2 bil­lion). HSBC, the Lon­don bank that had bought sub­prime giant House­hold Finance ear­li­er in the decade, was tak­ing a $3.4 bil­lion loss on sub­prime loans it held. These were mark­downs on their val­ue, not nec­es­sar­i­ly net loss­es. The rea­son they were being marked down: sub­prime delin­quen­cies. . . .”

Ibid.; p. 260.

10. As the sub­prime busi­ness was dying, so was the secre­tive Arnall. Note that it is pos­si­ble to com­mit assas­si­na­tions using can­cer. (FTR #644, among oth­er pro­grams, explores this pos­si­bil­i­ty.)

” . . . Adam Bass of Ameriquest Cap­i­tal Cor­po­ra­tion, Arnal­l’s hold­ing com­pa­ny (now wind­ing down what was left of its assets after the sale of Argent and Ameriquest’s ser­vic­ing busi­ness to Cit­i­group), was in atten­dance. The only reporter there was Lew Sichel­man, the nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed hous­ing colum­nist. (Sichel­man dined with Bass dur­ing the con­fer­ence.) A few weeks lat­er, Arnall died of can­cer in Los Ange­les after hav­ing resigned his ambas­sador­ship to the Nether­lands. He had come back to the Unit­ed States from Europe to be with a seri­ous­ly ill son who was also bat­tling can­cer. The inten­sive­ly pri­vate man had nev­er let on pub­licly that he, too, was sick. True to form, he had done his best to live under the radar. . . .”

Ibid.; p. 302.

11. Among the lumi­nar­ies at Arnal­l’s funer­al was Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger , a prob­a­ble oper­a­tive of the Under­ground Reich. Note again that his death silenced any com­ments he might have been able to make about the dev­as­tat­ing glob­al finan­cial cri­sis spurred in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by the “fruit” that he “seeded:–subprime.

“. . . In the world of sub­prime CDOs, it was all about trans­fer­ring risk: from the mort­gage lender into an ABS into a CDO. The fool was the last one hold­ing the bond.

Some of these fools were head­quar­tered over­seas in far­away lands. Oth­ers were for­eign banks or invest­ment bank­ing firms that had set up shop in New York City to lend mon­ey to non­bank sub­prime lenders, secu­ri­tize their mort­gages, cre­ate tranch­es, pack­age them into CDOs and send them across the Atlantic. Some were unlucky enough not to find investors for the CDOs, which meant they held them in their own invest­ment accounts. Ger­many’s Deutsche Bank, Switzer­land’s UBS Secu­ri­ties, and Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s Green­wich Cap­i­tal were all major play­ers in the U.S. sub­prime mar­ket. In April 2008 UBS took a $19 bil­lion write-down on its sub­prime busi­ness, which includ­ed secu­ri­ties that had fall­en in val­ue and were now worth a frac­tion of their orig­i­nal worth.

Two weeks before UBS unveiled its huge loss, Ameriquest founder Roland Arnall died of can­cer and was buried in Grif­fith Park in Los Ange­les. Ter­ry Rouch, who used to work for Arnall as an account exec­u­tive, was in atten­dance, as were fam­i­ly, friends, oth­er for­mer employ­ees, and politi­cians far and wide, includ­ing Los Ange­les May­or Anto­nio Vil­laraigosa, for­mer gov­er­nor Gray Davis, and cur­rent Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, the retired movie star. Dur­ing the entire cer­e­mo­ny and pro­ces­sion, Schwarzeneg­ger stood near Rouch, who with his sun­glass­es and ath­let­ic build blend­ed in with the gov­er­nor’s secu­ri­ty detail. ‘Arnold put his hand on my shoul­der a few times,’ remem­bered Rouch. ‘He thought I was one of his body­guards.’

Rouch did­n’t recall any­thing being said at the funer­al about Ameriquest. It was obvi­ous to him that it was nei­ther the time nor the place. The focus, as it should have been, was on Arnal­l’s achieve­ments as a human­i­tar­i­an, his work with the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter. ‘It felt like a polit­i­cal ral­ly with the amount of politi­cians com­ing to pay their respects,’ said Rouch. ‘It was a touch­ing Jew­ish cer­e­mo­ny. You could say there was­n’t a dry eye in the place-but it was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly for the pass­ing of the father of sub­prime. It was for our own futures.’. . .”

Ibid.; p. 308.

12. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at Fair­field Green­wich Group and Wal­ter Noel. In past dis­cus­sion of Mad­off, Mr. Emory has opined that the Mad­off oper­a­tion was, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, a Bormann/Underground Reich oper­a­tion.

In that con­text, the back­ground of Mad­off “feed­er fund” head Wal­ter Noel derived much of his eco­nom­ic grav­i­tas from his wife’s fam­i­ly, of mixed Brazil­ian and Swiss extrac­tion. Although one should not jump to con­clu­sions on the basis of too lit­tle infor­ma­tion, a care­ful exam­i­na­tion of Noel’s Fair­field Green­wich Group and oth­er aspects of the Mad­off milieu points in the direc­tion of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

The areas of inter­est and oper­a­tion for those around Noel–Europe (South­ern Europe and Switzer­land in par­tic­u­lar) and Latin Amer­i­ca–are the pri­ma­ry places of busi­ness for the Bor­mann net­work. For more about Mad­off, see FTR #‘s 658, 665.

 

“. . . F.G.G. [Fair­field Green­wich Group] was some­times steered to clients by Mon­i­ca Noel’s cousins. Half Swiss, half Brazil­ian, she was a mem­ber of the promi­nent Hae­gler fam­i­ly. Her cousin Jorge Paulo Lemann is Brazil’s rich­est financier and co-owns InBev, Bud­weis­er’s par­ent com­pa­ny. . .”

“Green­wich Mean Time” by Vicky Ward; Van­i­ty Fair; April/2009; p. 103.

13. More about Noel and his family/business associates–note that Noel’s sons-in-law all work for F.G.G. in Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, areas of pri­ma­ry busi­ness involve­ment by the Bor­mann net­work and the Under­ground Reich.

Was the Mad­off oper­a­tion and Noel’s F.G.G. a Bor­mann oper­a­tion, in part or in whole?

“As Fair­field Green­wich expand­ed, the most promi­nent of its sales­men came to be Noel’s own sons-in-law, whose Euro­pean and South Amer­i­can back­grounds were invalu­able to the firm . . . F.G.G.‘s chief share­hold­er is Andres Piedrahi­ta, who owns 22 per­cent. Piedrahi­ta, 50, is a short, brash Colom­bian mar­ried to Noel’s eldest daugh­ter, Cori­na, 45. . . .The oth­er Noel sons-in-law have also reaped rich­es from F.G.G.-and all but one of them worked for the firm. Yanko Del­la Schi­a­va, 44, an Ital­ian mar­ried to Noel’s sec­ond daugh­ter, Lisi­na, 44, sold F.G.G. in North­ern Italy and south­ern Switzer­land. . . .Noel’s fourth daugh­ter, Alix, 41, often called the ‘earth­i­est’ of the sis­ters, is mar­ried to Swiss-born Philip Toub, 43. Noel put him to work sell­ing Fair­field Green­wich most­ly in Brazil, where the Toubs moved before return­ing recent­ly to Green­wich with their four chil­dren.

The fam­i­ly’s ‘baby,’ as she is often called, Marisa, mar­ried a dash­ing New York hedge-fund man­ag­er, Matt Brown, 39, in 2002. In 2005, his com­pa­ny merged into F.G.G., where his job was to bring in new busi­ness. . .”

Ibid.; pp. 103–104.